Book Description

The first volume of the collected major articles of Richard M. Frank, pioneering student of Islamic theology (kalam), contains fifteen essays. It includes his early studies, classic but inaccessible for many in their original publication, on the text and terminology of Graeco-Arabic translations (De anima, Themistius on the Metaphysics, Plotinus in Syriac, 'anniya) and the terminology of early kalam. Other articles deal with Islamic theology and its early development, especially in its relation to philosophy (in particular the kalam of Jahm ibn Safwan and al-Ghazali), and the text and translation of two short dogmatic works by the mystic al-Qushayri. The collection is prefaced by a fascinating autobiographical memoir which traces the intellectual development of the author and the reasoning that led him, from study to study, to his discovery of the way of thinking of the theologians and to an understanding of the essential core of Islamic theology.